A user who spent $2,199 on a brand new iPhone Duo was left with a broken display just three hours after taking it out of the box. The owner opened the foldable screen like a normal book, felt some resistance, and then heard a loud pop. When the buyer took the broken unit to Apple for a replacement, the company refused to fix it under warranty and blamed the buyer for the damage.
Apple denied the warranty and suggested buying extra insurance
The Reddit user, known as chimchambam, preordered the 512GB Star White model from Verizon and received it on October 24. The owner mentioned treating the device with care and opening it no more than 20 times. On the final attempt, a noticeable resistance appeared right before the internal display snapped. This left a black spot and dead lines across the panel.
Instead of getting a quick swap, the buyer faced a dead end. Since a replacement from the carrier would take months to arrive, the owner drove to a local retail store hoping for a better solution. The staff inspected the broken iPhone and concluded the device must have been dropped.
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The store representative told the buyer that new technology is fragile. The employee suggested adding an insurance plan to the device to cover the repair costs. Even though the owner showed them multiple online posts from other people suffering from the same hardware failure, the store workers remained in denial.
Rather than paying extra to fix a defective product, the user decided to return the broken unit to the carrier before the return window closes. It looks like early buyers might want to hold onto their current devices until the manufacturer acknowledges this widespread hardware issue.
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